


Boys in the Attic

by boonies



Category: Dong Bang Shin Ki
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:05:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boonies/pseuds/boonies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yunho's perilous journey to resist the jailbait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boys in the Attic

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Мальчики, которые живут на крыше](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5433794) by [jaejandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaejandra/pseuds/jaejandra)



Based on that ridiculous photo of [manga!Changmin](http://boonies.tumblr.com/post/43276779972)—for pumpkin.

*

 

Yunho's life is a matter of balance.

 

He's kind of living paycheck to paycheck, sure, and maybe his diet primarily consists of ramyun and candy he steals from the principal's office, yeah, but he's on hiatus from a nice university and he's student-teaching at a decent high school and he has a crush on the music teacher and she generally always giggles when she sees him and last week he actually spoke a whole sentence to her and life is calm and normal and _good_.

 

And then his aunt shows up.

 

She just knocks down his door one morning, hauling some sulky kid behind her, and tells him, "This is your cousin and he's gonna be staying with you and bye."

 

And then Yunho's left staring, sprawled on the tatami mat and barely awake, at a thing that looks _exactly_ like Bambi had kittens or cubs or fawns or whatever deer have with a _puppy_.

 

"I'm not sleeping on the floor," the puppy says and unceremoniously dumps his school bag in front of Yunho's face.

 

Which is how Yunho starts sharing a really tiny attic apartment with his cousin, apparently.

 

*

 

The next morning, the puppy just leisurely shuffles into Yunho's classroom while Yunho's busy taking attendance.

 

He sprawls across a desk way in the back, radiating indifference or annoyance or something equally stereotypical.

 

Several girls melt on the spot, a pink vapor left in their wake.

 

"Shim Changmin," Yunho reads off the roster.

 

Changmin taps two fingers to his temple, bored, and puts his feet up on the desk. "Present."

 

Yunho marks him absent.

 

*

 

"You actually _pay_ for your music?" Changmin snorts, spying over Yunho's shoulder.

 

Yunho clicks on the final _purchase album_ link and hopes he doesn't overdraft his checking.

 

"How else would I get music?" Yunho frowns as his computer syncs up.

 

Changmin brings his face super close. "Steal it?"

 

Yunho sighs.

 

*

 

Today, Yunho spoke two complete sentences to the music teacher.

 

Didn't stutter or stammer or humiliate himself.

 

So he goes home deliriously happy, swinging a bag full of instant noodles, whistling the whole way.

 

And then he opens the door and finds all the cabinets open and ransacked and there's an overflowing pot of boiling water fucking up the stove. The counters have third-degree burns and an entire piece of plaster is peeling off the ceiling. The fan undulates irregularly, string broken.

 

"My security deposit..." is all Yunho can manage to say before Changmin cringes and offers a weak, "I was hungry."

 

*

 

Yunho cooks the ramyun over a candle flame.

 

It takes an hour.

 

Angrily, he hoards the entire pot, cradling it in one arm and throwing furious glances Changmin's way.

 

With quiet grace, Changmin just sits across him, feet buried under the kotatsu, hungrily staring at the steaming noodles.

 

As if on cue, his stomach makes a satanic noise.

 

With a sigh, Yunho twirls a big piece around his pair of chopsticks and proffers it to Changmin.

 

Grinning, Changmin leans over and closes his mouth over it.

 

"Sorry about your security deposit," he mumbles around the food, bangs flopping over his eyes.

 

Yunho watches his mouth working and says, honestly, "I'm just glad you're okay."

 

Changmin stops chewing.

 

He watches Yunho suspiciously for a long moment, as though no one's ever said that to him before, then smiles.

 

"Hyung, we gotta buy a microwave."

 

*

 

They buy a cheap burner instead.

 

Yunho catches Changmin drying his socks on it.

 

*

 

"Seonsaengnimmmm," one of his students whines, ambushing him on the way to class, "please make sure you put me in the same group with Changmin-ah, okay~"

 

She floats off with a deep, ominous chortle, limbs flailing in physically impossible ways.

 

Yunho lets Changmin work alone on all consequent group projects.

 

*

 

"You get paid tomorrow, right?" Changmin asks, nose buried in a raunchy manhwa.

 

Yunho fixes himself in the mirror with a grin. "Yep. Which is why I'm on my way to ask Hyorin-ssi out—"

 

"You can't," Changmin says, eyes dark.

 

Yunho scowls. "Why not."

 

Changmin sits up, feigning indifference. "She's an a-cup."

 

Carefully, Yunho rewinds his mental photographs. "...I'm not shallow—"

 

" _You're_ basically an a-cup," Changmin says, staring at Yunho's shirt. "You're bigger than an a-cup, probably. So you can't."

 

*

 

Hyorin-ssi sips her coffee delicately.

 

Yunho twists his hands under the table, struggling for conversation starters.

 

_You're an a-cup_ probably wouldn't be a good one so he randomly checks his phone instead.

 

There's a missed call from Changmin.

 

And a voice-mail.

 

"Is something wrong?" Hyorin-ssi asks and Yunho gives her a polite smile.

 

"No, just my cousin—" he hits play, "—probably torching the neighborhood..."

 

Changmin's voice plays through, rough and hoarse, and Yunho jumps to his feet, chair scraping against the floor.

 

*

 

Yunho makes it home so quickly the laws of time and space bend around him.

 

All Changmin said was, "Hyung, I don't feel good," and offered no helpful details like whether he needed cough medicine or paramedics or the coroner.

 

So, panting, Yunho climbs the rickety stairs like a cheetah and bursts through the door.

 

The apartment is dark and quiet and for a moment, panic smothers the crap out of Yunho, but then Changmin says, somewhere behind the sofa, "Hyung?"

 

Yunho leaps over the couch and lands by Changmin's bedroll. He can't quite make him out in the darkness, so he paws blindly for his forehead.

 

It doesn't feel warm.

 

"What's wrong," he asks, brushing Changmin's sweaty bangs away.

 

Changmin curls closer, pressing against Yunho's palm. "I just feel like shit."

 

Yunho runs his fingers through Changmin's hair until Changmin falls asleep.

 

*

 

Yunho's grading a really terrible, barely literate paper, when Changmin pokes his head into the teachers' lounge.

 

Several of the secretaries stop typing to sigh wistfully.

 

"Seonsaengnim," Changmin says with a polite bow, clearly annoyed, "I need to speak with you for a moment."

 

Thrown by the niceties, Yunho mutters a guarded, "Uh, sure," and follows Changmin into the hallway.

 

"Here," Changmin grumbles and shoves a disc sleeve at Yunho's chest.

 

Irritated, he stalks off down the hallway, towering above everyone he passes, and Yunho glances at his hands.

 

It's a mix CD.

 

*

 

"You paid for all those songs, right," Yunho asks for the hundredth time.

 

Leaning on the shopping cart, Changmin rolls his eyes. "I'm not a technologically-impaired grandpa like you, so no."

 

Brows knitted, Yunho empties an entire shelf of instant curry into their cart. "I'm not going to listen to illegally downloaded songs—"

 

Changmin groans so loudly customers four aisles over turn around to stare.

 

"Fine, don't fucking listen to them," he snaps and rolls the cart away.

 

Yunho finds proof of purchase pinned to his bag in the morning.

 

*

 

On his second date with Hyorin-ssi, Yunho is the _definition_ of charming.

 

He's got no idea where all this confidence and suavity is coming from but she seems properly impressed and smitten so the next step is to get married and have babies—

 

Yunho's phone rings.

 

He picks up.

 

"Are we out of laundry detergent?" Changmin asks.

 

There's loud banging in the background.

 

Yunho hangs up.

 

Ten minutes later, his phone rings again.

 

"Never mind, I found the laundry detergent."

 

Yunho hangs up and puts his phone on silent.

 

"I was thinking," Hyorin-ssi is saying primly, looping her arm through Yunho's as they stroll down the street, "for our next date, we could—"

 

Yunho checks his phone.

 

There's a string of unread text messages.

 

_18:44 hey, when did we get a dog?_

 

_18:47 yeah... so... there's definitely a dog in our apartment, if you care_

 

_18:51 do you have the number for animal control_

 

"Hyorin-ssi," Yunho says apologetically, "I'm so sorry, but—"

 

"Your cousin, yeah, I know," she sighs.

 

*

 

So now they have a dog.

 

*

 

"I put up posters everywhere," Yunho says a week later.

 

Changmin ignores him, balancing a strip of bacon off the dog's snout.

 

"Did you hear—"

 

"I heard," Changmin shrugs. He pets the dog's fluffy head and makes the saddest expression known to man. "I've never had a dog before."

 

Yunho should say _you don't actually have one now_ but instead he agrees to walk the thing in the morning and Changmin can walk it at night.

 

But then Changmin inevitably says, "Let's walk him together."

 

Yunho has to put together a lesson plan because winter's right around the corner so he shoos both puppies away with an irritated, "That wasn't the deal."

 

It's super quiet for a long moment, which makes him look up with worry.

 

Changmin and the dog are both patiently standing by the doorway.

 

With a sigh, Yunho grabs the leash.

 

*

 

Winter slams into the city totally unexpectedly.

 

Well, aside from the numerous weather advisories and warnings.

 

Anyway. Yunho's not prepared. He shows up to his third date with Hyorin-ssi completely under-dressed and freezing his ass off.

 

For a moment, when they're walking past a shiny new bookstore and Hyorin-ssi is sipping at her iced tea, Yunho wishes he was in his horrible little apartment with his horrible little cousin and their horrible little dog, slurping noodles and watching cartoons.

 

Which makes him feel childish and awful, so he tentatively twines his fingers with hers.

 

Hyorin-ssi's fingers are tiny and gloved and warm and Yunho's are long and numb and they don't fit together very well at all.

 

With his other hand, he checks his phone but there's no text messages or missed calls.

 

*

 

Yunho comes home to an empty apartment.

 

He figures Changmin's just out walking the dog but then an hour passes, then two, then three.

 

There's a weird sense of foreboding twisting Yunho's stomach so he grabs his damp coat and runs outside, searching frantically.

 

He runs past the school and the convenience store and the frigid winter air burns down his throat and into his lungs so he doesn't even have enough breath reserve to yell when he finds Changmin at the park.

 

The idiot's sitting on a swing, in his pajamas, alone.

 

"Where's Haru," Yunho pants.

 

Quietly, Changmin glances at the leash in his hands.

 

"Apparently," he says softly, "his name was Peanut? The owner showed up today."

 

Yunho's heart sinks.

 

"I had to give him back," Changmin says, voice breaking.

 

Yunho slumps into the swing next to him.

 

He means to grab the leash but his fingers curl around Changmin's.

 

They fit perfectly.

 

*

 

"—and for homework, please remember to read chapters 21 through 23—"

 

The class offers him a collective moan of disapproval.

 

"Hey, I don't make the rules," Yunho grins and flicks chalk at the first row of students.

 

The bell rings and the kids shuffle out listlessly, muttering veiled threats and obscenities.

 

Chuckling, Yunho sticks out his hand to block the door just as the last student is exiting.

 

"Here," he tells Changmin and slips a cheap phone charm into his uniform pocket.

 

It's a tiny puppy.

 

Changmin staggers away, face pink.

 

*

 

On Yunho's fifth date with Hyorin-ssi, she says, "You're Shim Changmin's homeroom teacher, right."

 

Yunho's heart sort of stops a little. "Y... es."

 

She makes a face. "Is he a good kid?"

 

_As good as any hormonal eighteen-year-old with abandonment issues can be_ , Yunho thinks but says, "He's... very smart."

 

Hyorin-ssi clucks her tongue. "He's been staring at me a lot lately."

 

"Ah," Yunho offers. "He... probably likes you."

 

"No, sometimes I feel like," she says, gesticulating warily, "he's praying I'll get hit by a bus or a falling piano or..."

 

"He doesn't pray," Yunho says easily. His eyes widen, so he hastily adds, "Because he's, uh, Buddhist and... your scarf is really pretty."

 

Her face brightens. "Oh, thank you! My sister..."

 

*

 

"Hyorin-ssi thinks you don't like her."

 

Changmin gives him a lazy glare, hanging off the sofa, nose buried in another manhwa. "She's an a-cup."

 

Yunho scowls.

 

"Changminnie," he tries, "she could possibly, in the future—"

 

Changmin freezes. "What did you call me?"

 

Yunho blinks. "Changminnie?"

 

Oddly flustered, Changmin slides off the couch and disappears into the bathroom.

 

He stays there for an hour.

 

*

 

"You need a haircut," Yunho sighs, batting playfully at Changmin's bangs.

 

Changmin's bent over his homework, one hand clutching a pencil, the other slapping Yunho away. He scowls like a hostile baby bird and stabs Yunho's stack of papers. "And you need to grade these."

 

Smiling, Yunho twirls a lock of Changmin's hair and tugs. "I could just give everyone 100% and watch TV instead."

 

"You're too popular as is," Changmin grumbles but doesn't push the fingers away.

 

"I'm popular?" Yunho asks, happy but mostly suspicious.

 

Changmin looks up, eyes narrowed. "It's because you wear those stupid fake glasses and all the girls won't shut up—"

 

"...how do you know they're fake..."

 

"Because I've seen you read the label off a can of soup from across the room."

 

"...I could be really nearsighted..."

 

Frustrated, Changmin purses his lips. "Farsighted, you mean," he huffs. "See, you don't even know the difference between—"

 

"Okay, okay," Yunho chuckles, sliding closer under the kotatsu and grabbing for his fake glasses with a mischievous grin. "So, what do the girls say—"

 

Changmin pales.

 

"Don't put them on," he says, pupils blown.

 

Yunho slips the frames atop his nose. "What, why not—"

 

Changmin bolts for the bathroom.

 

Yunho frowns.

 

*

 

On the first night of winter break, Changmin scoots his bedroll next to Yunho's mat.

 

"It's really fucking cold," Changmin explains, shivering.

 

Yunho's cold, too, but not cold enough to snuggle with a guy.

 

He maintains a one meter distance the whole night.

 

He wakes up tangled in Changmin.

 

*

 

Over break, Yunho spends an entire afternoon playing basketball with Donghae.

 

He comes home pretty late and collapses on the rug by the TV.

 

Changmin rounds the corner a minute later, giant pretzel stick hanging from his mouth.

 

"Did you get mugged," he asks nonchalantly, arms laden with snacks.

 

His favorite anime's queued on screen.

 

"Pulled a muscle," Yunho mumbles into the floor. "Can't move ever again."

 

Grinning, Changmin drops the food to the sofa, plops down next to Yunho, and goes to town undoing the mountain of knots tensing Yunho's shoulders.

 

"You're too rough," Yunho complains but his brain is pure mush and Changmin's hands feel like an army of angels warming him one atom at a time.

 

"Fine," Changmin shrugs and stops. He climbs back up on the sofa and places a bowl of chips on his stomach, long legs outstretched.

 

Yunho only has enough energy to turn his head and give Changmin a sad look.

 

Grinning lopsidedly, eyes mismatched, Changmin puts his feet up on Yunho's back like it's a coffee table and kneads away.

 

Yunho falls asleep smiling.

*

 

On his... sixth? date with Hyorin-ssi, Yunho nods off during some movie about jeans.

 

"Well, at least he didn't run off to be with his cousin again..." he thinks he hears her mutter.

 

*

 

For his birthday, Yunho's parents buy him a bed.

 

An actual bed. With a real mattress and a frame and a headboard.

 

It's totally gaudy in a tiny one room apartment, just assembled haphazardly in a windowless corner with no regard for interior design or functionality but Yunho's so happy to not have to sleep on a tatami mat that he doesn't care.

 

He faceplants into the mattress as soon as it gets dark, luxuriating in the soft give of the pillow-top.

 

A heavy weight bounces down next to him. The mattress dips pleasantly.

 

Yunho lifts his head to stare.

 

Changmin shrugs but won't look at him, lips thinning into a petulant line. "I told you I'm not sleeping on the floor."

 

"...six months ago..."

 

"And it's almost _my_ birthday, too."

 

Well, when he puts it that way, Yunho can't exactly complain.

 

So he just makes room and regularly starts waking up next to Changmin.

 

*

 

"—it's time to start seriously thinking about your post-secondary education," Yunho lectures.

 

Thirty pairs of eyes are trained on him as though he knows what he's talking about when, in reality, he picked his university by throwing a dart at Donghae's meticulously labeled and researched wall of ~options.

 

"What if we wanna get army out of the way first," one of the boys yawns, scratching at his buzz cut.

 

"That's a very practical choice," Yunho nods, satisfied.

 

Then he notices Changmin looking contemplative and blurts out, "Except for you!"

 

The whole class judges him pretty hard for the rest of the week.

 

*

 

Hyorin-ssi breaks up with him during their... something something date.

 

She says, "It's not you, it's your cousin."

 

*

 

 

"Did you buy soy sauce," Changmin greets when Yunho drags himself into the apartment, drenched with rain.

 

"Hyorin-ssi dumped me," he says and sheds his wet coat.

 

Changmin tenses, then bites back a weirdly smug grin. "Yeah, but did you buy soy sauce."

 

*

 

Yunho wakes up with Changmin's lips pressed to his collarbone.

 

Carefully, he extricates himself from the sleeping tangle of limbs and sneaks into the bathroom.

 

He takes his regular morning shower, using his regular conditioning shampoo, whistling his regular repertoire of songs but then he slides his hand lower and thinks about Changmin when he strokes off.

 

And that's not regular at all.

 

*

 

The students are cramming into the auditorium for state exams.

 

As a newbie, Yunho only has to stay for the first hour, patrolling the even rows of desks, and then he's free to do whatever.

 

He stays on campus, however, because if he goes home, he's going to see Changmin's t-shirts drying on the rack and Changmin's manhwas tucked into the spaces between sofa cushions and Changmin's half-eaten protein bars on the counter.

 

There are too many Changmins in that sentence and in Yunho's head, so Yunho heads for the nearest restroom to cool off.

 

But there's a Changmin there, too.

 

"Busted~" Minho from 3B sing-songs, squished in a bathroom stall with Kyuhyun from 3F and Changmin from... Yunho's apartment and family and bed.

 

"It's not what it looks like," Changmin starts hastily.

 

"You're not eating fried chicken on the toilet with two other dudes...?" Yunho asks, checking his watch and sanity.

 

Changmin's cheeks darken instantly.

 

Yunho goes home, laughing the whole way.

 

Obviously, thinking about Changmin in the shower is a thing that will never happen again.

 

Ever.

 

*

 

Yunho has to wake up an hour early on the first day of spring.

 

His body's not too cool with that but he tumbles out of bed anyway, vaguely registering Changmin's not there, and zombies his way into the bathroom.

 

He turns the knob.

 

Glances at the toilet.

 

Catches an extended glimpse of Changmin in the curtainless shower, one hand wrapped around his junk, eyes shut tight and mouth open in a silent gasp.

 

His grip tightens and his eyes open slowly and then he sees Yunho and just... comes into his hand, flushed red _everywhere_.

 

"FUCK—YOU—FUCK, LEARN HOW TO FUCKING KNOCK, YOU FUCKING—"

 

Yunho backpedals out of the bathroom, rock-hard.

 

*

 

"Is it cool if I stay with you for a couple of..." Yunho asks, shuffling after Donghae, "...years?"

 

Donghae pauses and sticks a student log under his arm. "Shit, did your cousin finally burn everything down?"

 

_In a sense_ , Yunho thinks, heart melting through his ribcage and pulse-dropping into his crotch.

 

"Just for the weekend, yeah?"

 

*

 

_20:11 we're out of kimchi_

 

_20:14 i'm gonna sell the tv and buy groceries_

 

_20:17 or cigarettes_

 

_20:18 or drugs_

 

_20:19 or hookers_

 

_20:49 hyung, okay, look, we're both men, and it's not like you don't_

 

_20:49 do that kind of stuff, too, so whatever_

 

_20:50 just come home, it's fine_

 

It's really _really_ not, Yunho wants to text but his fingers are too busy guiltily sliding to his boxers.

 

*

 

Donghae kicks him out on Monday morning.

 

Yunho mopes all day and when his homeroom students start trickling in, he sits down at his desk and doesn't move, on account of his body being the worst.

 

"I've decided to go to beauty school," one of the girls shares during their final ~our future~ hour, "because I watched Inkigayo yesterday and they just need to let me fix everyone's hair, okay."

 

"I'm gonna go into politics," one of the boys says flirtatiously, "and have Inkigayo canceled."

 

A wad of paper flies across the room.

 

"I wanna be a teacher," Changmin says when the paper lands on his desk.

 

" _I'm_ a teacher," Yunho argues stupidly as though no one in the room knows this.

 

"I'm gonna be a better one," Changmin scowls, fingers splayed across a textbook.

 

"It's my thing," Yunho says, irritated.

 

The class looks from one to the other like they're at a tennis match.

 

"I'm gonna make it my thing," Changmin shrugs.

 

*

 

They go home together.

 

Yunho fumes silently. Changmin walks behind, hands in his pockets. The moon rises somewhere on the horizon.

 

They say nothing until they get to the apartment and then Yunho mutters a grumpy, "I'm going to bed," and suddenly finds himself being thrown to the mattress.

 

Changmin straddles him, angry.

 

"It's fine, right," he demands, unbuttoning his uniform.

 

"What," Yunho manages, body on fire.

 

"It's fine that you saw me," Changmin says and reaches for Yunho's belt, "if _I_ see _you_ , right?" He unsnaps the buckle. "It'll make us even."

 

Yunho doesn't think it will make them anything except incestuous, so he bucks up and fights Changmin off. Well, not totally off so much as... he struggles his way on top of him.

 

"Stop acting like a kid," Yunho tells him and presses him firmly into the pillow.

 

Changmin's limbs go slack. "We're practically the same age."

 

Yunho frowns. "I'm two years older."

 

"And I'm two centimeters taller," Changmin argues, hooking a leg around Yunho's ass.

 

Yunho has no idea what either of them has said in the past five minutes.

 

"Just show me," Changmin says quietly, "and we can go back to how it was."

 

Yunho almost shoves his pants down in acquiescence, but yeah, that's not a thing he should be doing with a male or a relative or a student or any combination of those three and Changmin is that _entire list_ , so Yunho rolls off him and off the bed and grabs his old tatami mat out of storage and goes to sleep.

 

*

 

He wakes up with Changmin curled up in his old bedroll next to him.

 

*

 

"I want you to meet somebody," Hyorin-ssi says pleasantly during a school assembly. "She saw a picture of you on my phone and wanted to... marry you." She makes a face. "I'm cleaning up her actual words."

 

Donghae rolls his eyes. "Seriously, dude, only you can get your ex-girlfriends to hunt for your future-girlfriends."

 

Yunho's not paying attention.

 

Changmin's radiating extreme annoyance even from across the gym. There are several girls fawning over him, leaning on his shoulder and cooing at his hair and totally ignoring the principal's speech.

 

He meets Yunho's eyes and scowls.

 

"So you'll meet her?" Hyorin-ssi chirps, surreptitiously kicking Donghae in the shin.

 

Yunho averts his eyes.

 

"Yeah."

 

*

 

"I kind of stole Hyorin-ah's first boyfriend," Seohyun-ssi says during dinner, "so I'm a little surprised she let me meet you—"

 

Yunho's phone vibrates.

 

_17:33 don't come home early, i have a girl over_

 

"I just... feel like there's a catch—" Seohyun-ssi laughs, giving his forearm a coquettish pat.

 

Yunho clutches his phone so hard the case cracks around the edges.

 

"I mean, why would she be cool with me dating a perfect guy like—"

 

_17:35 where do you keep your condoms_

 

Yunho's out of the restaurant in under a heartbeat.

 

*

 

Yunho stalks home, each step deepening his resolve.

 

Or shortening his temper, whatever.

 

He keeps thinking, which girl, why, is she who Changmin thinks about in the shower, how long has this been going on, what can he do to stop it, why does he want to stop it—

 

He takes two stairs at a time and he doesn't even care that the girl is probably one of his students and that all his secrets will be spilled if he barges in unannounced and outraged; he just violently unlocks the door and pushes inside, prepared to kick her out and to lecture Changmin for an eternity.

 

He steps into the room and Changmin looks up from a video game.

 

The apartment is empty.

 

"Hey," Changmin says calmly.

 

Yunho loses all energy.

 

He drags a tired hand over his face and says, voice rough, "You have to stop doing that."

 

Changmin returns his attention to the video game. "Nah."

 

"Changmin," Yunho says, drained. "Why do you hate me—"

 

Coolly, Changmin tosses a controller at him. "Play against me."

 

Frustrated, Yunho grips the controller and kicks off his shoes and grits his teeth. "If I win, you move out."

 

Changmin's back goes stiff.

 

After a beat, he narrows his eyes at the screen. "If _I_ win..."

 

Yunho turns his head.

 

Voice a little shaky, Changmin says, "We fuck."

 

Yunho lets him win.

 

*

 

In the morning, Yunho calls his mother.

 

"So precisely how related are we?"

 

His mother pauses. "You and me?"

 

Yunho leans his forehead against the wall. "Me and Shim Changmin. If you have the exact DNA percentage, I'd appreciate it."

 

"What," his mother says, concerned. "Wait, who?"

 

Yunho squints at the wall, eyes crossing. "The guy who's been living with me for the last eight months?"

 

"Oh, little Changmin," his mother says and Yunho has the most inappropriate mental reminder of how untrue that is. "He's your father's sister's... I wanna say... stepson... from her... I wanna say... second? marriage."

 

Yunho exhales into the plaster. "So we're not related at all."

 

"Well, only legally, I guess, until she remarries?"

 

*

 

"You knew."

 

Changmin toes off his shoes, loosens his tie, and closes the door behind him. "You're gonna have to be more specific."

 

Yunho walks into his personal space. "I'm more related to a banana than you."

 

Changmin cracks up, hiding his mouth behind a pale hand. "Oh, you're definitely half-banana."

 

Yunho yanks the hand away and kisses him.

 

Changmin drops his schoolbag and reciprocates like Yunho is air and water and all the elements he needs to live and Yunho should know which ones since he kinda teaches _science_ but—

 

"I just wanted," Changmin sighs into his mouth, sounding shy and obnoxious at the same time, "you to break the law for me." He slides his hands to Yunho's chest, curling one palm over his heart. "Since you're making me pay for downloads."

 

Yunho wants to call Changmin's parents and the doctor who delivered him and thank them profusely for bringing him into the world.

 

Instead, he pushes Changmin away and pats himself down, affecting composure.

 

"If it had turned out we were really related," he drawls, "I'd never have sex with you again."

 

A grin tugs at Changmin's lips.

 

He takes a slow, sure step forward and pulls Yunho in by his belt loop. "Yeah, you would."

 

Yeah, Yunho would.

*

 

Yunho lives paycheck to paycheck and his diet consists of ramyun and he way overpays for wireless, but some days, Changmin waits for him outside, perched on a rickety stairwell, sunlight in his messy hair, reading a college textbook and gritting out an exasperated _you're late_.

 

In retaliation, he ignores Yunho for minutes or hours but he fondles the cheap phone charm Yunho gave him in fourteen second intervals and, every time, Yunho sits down as far away as he can and stays quiet and happy and in love.

 

And when, every time, Changmin tosses the textbook over his shoulder with a frustrated little growl, pounces on Yunho, and topples him over with zero restraint, Yunho thinks, yeah, he's found his balance.


End file.
